Scan barcode
A review by tfitoby
Maigret's Memoirs by Howard Curtis, Georges Simenon
4.0
Inspector Jules Maigret, the basis for Georges Simenon's famous fictional detective Inspector Jules Maigret, pens his memoirs of the early part of his career in an attempt to put right some of the liberties that Georges Simenon took with his personality and working style, not to mention his taste in clothes!
This was quite an unexpected venture from Simenon, his Maigret novels usually deemed a safe playground to work on settings and plot for his other more literary works somehow found themselves in the meta-fictional realm, a fictional character arguing with the person who wrote them. At its heart is the argument that perhaps the more honest truth in literature is the fictional truth because the honest truth sounds completely unbelievable to a reader, somewhat similar to Andre Bazin's assertion that a cinematic image is more real than the original object.
But Maigret does give some interesting back story to his own character, detailing his orphaned childhood, the accidental meeting with a senior Paris detective that set him on his path to being the famous Jules Maigret, and the many long days and nights in and around the seediest parts of Paris that provided him with a deep understanding and even respect for the criminal classes.
It's a fun addition to the series that I highly recommend fans seek out.
This was quite an unexpected venture from Simenon, his Maigret novels usually deemed a safe playground to work on settings and plot for his other more literary works somehow found themselves in the meta-fictional realm, a fictional character arguing with the person who wrote them. At its heart is the argument that perhaps the more honest truth in literature is the fictional truth because the honest truth sounds completely unbelievable to a reader, somewhat similar to Andre Bazin's assertion that a cinematic image is more real than the original object.
But Maigret does give some interesting back story to his own character, detailing his orphaned childhood, the accidental meeting with a senior Paris detective that set him on his path to being the famous Jules Maigret, and the many long days and nights in and around the seediest parts of Paris that provided him with a deep understanding and even respect for the criminal classes.
It's a fun addition to the series that I highly recommend fans seek out.